The USA thanks you so that we may spend time with our families. The average USA private corporate worker only gets around 7 holiday days off a year. Know that we will gladly cover your holidays as well.

Indeed. Thanks, war4peace, for covering. And unlike most other first world countries, there is no legally mandated minimum yearly vacation in the US. Some workers may get no vacation at all during the year, so these holidays are a welcome time off.

Erm, isn't that a bit over the top, though? I mean, whatever you think of our work and/or healthcare system(s), we definitely meet the definition as a "highly developed industrialized nation." Maybe you don't like how things are over here and don't consider them to be as good as where you are but there's that and then there are places like Chad.

Thanks again to our international friends who cover for us as we pack ourselves full of carbs! 3

Also: why do you get to use Canadian artists? Canada's OUR hat, not yours.

You HAVE been to Canada, right? You HAVE interacted with Canadians before? Try telling them they're essentially part of the USA and see how far you get. They're a british/french colony, and culturally vastly different from even Seattle, just across the border.

The reason they are so patriotic and display the maple leaf everywhere isn't just because they're proud to be canadian - it's because they don't want people to mistake them

Wow, in the last 10 years I have had +/- 42 paid vacation days per year here in the Netherlands, I am taking 14 to 2013, so I will have +/- 56 next year.I do have to say though, I work in a school and we get +/- 17 more vacation days than the private sector.Since I work in our IT department, I don't even have to follow all the school holidays and take my vacation in the off season which is cheaper.We don't have the "sick days" system that you guys have though, if I get sick for 7 weeks, then there will be no consequences.I guess I am just a lucky guy:)

...and yet they get more done in that shorter amount of time than other countries that don't have such policies...

This is a cliche Europeans like to fool themselves with, and it may be true in grocery stores and restaurants, where Americans like the place to be clean, and like to receive actual service, so more people tend to be employed. This is made possible by the low taxes, which make it affordable to hire people for menial jobs. In Europe, this is simply too expensive, and menial work barely gets done at all. That's why there's garbage and poop in the streets everywhere, and you have to pack your own groceries.

This is a cliche Europeans like to fool themselves with, and it may be true in grocery stores and restaurants, where Americans like the place to be clean, and like to receive actual service, so more people tend to be employed. This is made possible by the low taxes, which make it affordable to hire people for menial jobs.

Most supermarkets I use in continental Europe are perfectly clean and well-serviced, but you're right about the taxes. I see supermarkets open late at night in the USA with no customers, and yet it's obviously worth someone's while to keep them open for a handful of people because the staff are barely paid anything at all.

That's why there's garbage and poop in the streets everywhere, and you have to pack your own groceries.

I hate having some incompetent dickhead pack my groceries for me, so I always avoid places that offer to do this. They always do it wrong and end up squasing or breaking stuff. I wish Amer

It's not about taxes, it's about values and culture.You're medical system is vastly superior to ours in the US, in a number of ways.

I'll gladly pay more in taxes to have a social medical system. At least I could start my own business and not worry about my children's health. I know a lot of start ups that dies becasue n they can't afford health care to people with experience.I know a lot of people who can't go work for a start up becasue they need insurance.

When people talk about health insurance and the economy, they always ignore all the business that don't happen becasue we have insurance tied to jobs.

Here in Stockholm we'll cover for you guys on Thursday and Friday, then on Sunday it's the Zontar Second Annual Transnational Expat Thanksgiving Feast at my place. Everyone is coming, I think, with the assumption that the second turkey I've ever cooked in my life will turn out as well as the first one did 2 years ago (last year, we went to see my folks in the States). We'll see if their faith in me is justified.

According to alexia page rank 27.5% of hits are from the USA [alexa.com]. India comes second with 25.9%. Just think, if the polls reflected demographic we would have been just as likely to get a "What will you be doing on 13 November?" last week with "lighting lamps around your house [wikipedia.org]" as one option. This would have had as many non-Indians googling the data as this poll had non-Americans.

Alexa is probably especially poor at representing slashdot demographics, given that the population here has a strong aversion to running basically anything unnecessary and/or that tracks you.

If this poll [slashdot.org] is at all accurate, then slashdot is 60-70% US based.

I would be very surprised if a poll about US elections did not have a disproportionate number of US residents taking part. I am not sure why American slashdotters would be less likely to use alexia than other slashdotters, and though of course it is possible I would think their figures are probably closer to reality than self-selected poll completers

I remember making linguini one side green (spinach) the other side red (red pepper) for my little girl, now 20, who loves fresh pasta.
It kinda leached together when you cooked it, but it might work better as lasagna.

Black Friday... that's that day when people who've never heard of the Internet go to actual stores to buy things, right?

Correct. Those who have heard of the internet wait until (Cyber) Monday. Now that it's spread over two different days, the shopping craziness is reduced compared to the pre-internet days.

However, between camera phones and the internet, the inevitable "Jingle All the Way"-style conflicts over in-demand merchandise that show up on YouTube can provide some quality entertainment for those of us watching from the sidelines.

A friend, a chef, decided to test the popular opinion that everything is better with bacon, or with butter, or deep-fried. So he took a stick of butter, wrapped it in bacon, battered it, and dropped it in the deep frier.

A friend, a chef, decided to test the popular opinion that everything is better with bacon, or with butter, or deep-fried. So he took a stick of butter, wrapped it in bacon, battered it, and dropped it in the deep frier.

The results were... disappointing.

Deep fried butter is a staple at many of the US state fairs.The trick is to take a frozen stick of butter.

As for bacon, you need to pre-fry it before you batter it. Cut a stick of wood just slightly bigger a stick of butter, wrap the bacon around it, and fry it (including three tilts).Then slide out the wooden stick, slide in a frozen butter stick, dip it in batter, flour and batter again, and deep fry it.Let it cool slightly, then serve it Nyotaimori style.

Sadly this isn't surprising to me in the least. I had friends who worked in restaurants who also experimented with what you can deep fry. While never being exposed to this as my early job was working at a gas station. As a side bonus we did play will it burn in the back room and discovered that a large number of ordinary house hold items that one wouldn't normally think are combustible actually are.

And you guys go on about the mythical Scottish beast, the deep-fried Mars bar?

No, but I am trying to find out how to deep-fry whisky.The challenge is for the alcohol to not catch fire in the fryer nor evaporate, yet avoid using a vessel for holding the whisky that's either inedible or changes the flavour.

I've thought about filling the whisky inside an ice cube, but sealing it is the hard part. Any ideas that would pass an engineering test?

Not really. Like most American holidays (e.g. Labor Day, Presidents Day, MLK Day, Memorial Day, etc.), Thanksgiving has lost most meaning beyond an excuse to get together with family and eat a bunch of good food.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. The original meaning has to do with some colonists who were rescued by some of the natives. This being a country of immigrants, most families' histories have about as much to do with the original Thanksgiving as they do with Yom Kippur. If it weren't for the traditional big meal with the family, I suspect Thanksgiving would join May Day on the list of holidays Americans no longer give a shit about.

You're pretty much describing Christmas Day here in the UK. Very little overt religious sentiment, just back to the original solstice celebration.

I am curious though. When did the US start celebrating "Happy Holidays"? It's meaningless. European levels of Christianity are far lower than the US, but we've no problems calling it by its proper name, even though most (including myself) would never worship in a church from one year to another,

That's just retailers trying to make their big "sales" season last from October through February without a break. Whether this actually works is difficult to prove, since pretty much all major retailers started doing it at more or less the same time, back in the eighties. Initially the "happy holidays" retail season was just late November through early January, but it gets extended at both ends every year. If the trend continues unabated, it'll be y

Yeah. I know about the solstice celebrations. Reread the comment. What about the 'Holidays' question?

Re: northern hemisphere, mid-latitude seasonal celebrations. We still have the sinking of the daylight (Halloween/Nov 5th) and Spring (Easter). What happened to summer/Lammas? It just got subsumed. Wonder why? (damn, another question).

Because shopkeepers try to be inclusive. There are several holidays that fall around the 25th. Hanukkah, Christmas, Ramadan, Solstice, and who knows what else? So rather than querying someone to find out their holiday (it's not like they have tags or anything), shopkeepers tend to fall back to "Happy Holidays".

So going shopping means you hear "Happy Holidays" more often than anything else. So we mindlessly mimic what we hear and say "Happy Holidays" to one and all. You really have to be thinking to make yourself say "Merry Christmas" or whatever holiday greeting you prefer because you're going against the tide.

If it weren't for the traditional big meal with the family, I suspect Thanksgiving would join May Day on the list of holidays Americans no longer give a shit about.

The U.S. government decided the day to honor labor should get moved away from May 1st since May Day celebrations were associated with socialists, communists, etc. That's why the U.S. celebrates Labor Day as the first Monday in September.

On the other hand, that leaves May Day open for doing things with virgins and maypoles.

> Possibly in their time zones there may be a US football game to watch outside of work time.

Non-Americans don't generally know about football. They use the word "football", but it's in reference to a different sport that's actually a lot more like soccer than football, albeit with three major differences from soccer: A) it's actually popular (in the countries where it is played); B) instead of just gradeschool kids, they actually have adults play it, some of whom are professional athletes; and C) inst

November 28 is the Thai holiday "Loy Kratong". It is an ordinary weekday (this year), but in the evening my family and I will go to the park to LOY (float) our KRATONG (flower boat) to give thanks to the Goddess of Waters for another successful year and hope for the future. (Or thanks to Jehovah, or Allah, or Buddha, or Vishnu, or whomever you prefer to thank.)

Foodwise I don't expect anything out of the ordinary. While my office is open (we only close for holidays mentioned in the Torah, plus Labor Day due to an unrelated ethnic celebration making the neighborhood a bit too chaotic and dangerous) I'll be taking the national holiday off.

It'll be my wife's first Thanksgiving in the U.S. so I think we'll get up early and troop all the way over to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (yeah, okay, "all the way over" is like three blocks from our apartment as we liv

I do have a friend who's having a Saturday "leftovers" dinner (though he's making a fresh turkey and stuffing, and it's potluck for the rest) which my wife, daughter and I will be attending. So, I'll still get my tryptophan fix.:D

My fiance works on Thanksgiving, as he is in a profession (he works at a group home) where someone must be there 24/7. My family is a several hours away, and I admit that I'd rather not go do that without him. So his family, who live in the same city we do, are doing Thanksgiving on Sunday instead.

I've a few friends who don't have family in the area and don't really have anywhere else to go on Thanksgiving, and invite them over. I tell them I'll do the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy and if they want anything else they need to bring it themselves. One year while working as a contractor for Ericsson, I had several of their overseas contractors over. That was a fun Thanksgiving! A couple of them had never experienced it before, so I felt it was my duty to make sure they had a great time. Even if you

Considering the day before thanksgiving (skanksgiving) is one of the biggest party nights in North America, not sure how that option was missed. As for my self i will be attending an event to benefit police and firefighters, of course it includes lots of alcohol, so im sure just moving and any direction will be unpleasant and not the norm.

...but I will still be thankful that this year I have a job, and that my car hasn't pulled a Bluesmobile on me yet. And so, as I dig into my pizza or burger or sushi or whatever it is I have on that day, I will keep that in mind.

I am having jaw surgery the day before thanksgiving you insensitive clod.

Mmmm.. liquidified turkey.

Jones Soda have, sporadically, had Turkey and Gravy [jonessoda.com] soda. One year, they even had a pack that also included sweetpotatoe soda, pea soda, dinner roll soda - and an antacid soda for the day after.Unfortunately, it doesn't seem they have the special this year.